What can you learn by listening audio CDs?

CDs have been around for a long time now and everyone has at least a small pile of them in their house. Even now that music downloading is more popular a lot of people still prefer to own the physical product.

But audio CDs aren’t only for music. There are a ton of entertainment and learning opportunities that are available on compact disc too.

Audiobooks

These can be both entertaining and educational. If you work somewhere that permits you to listen to music while you work or you’re driving on a long journey, having someone read a novel to you can be very soothing and is a welcome alternative to chart music radio quite often. From an educational view point, students who are writing book reports can listen to the audiobook in order to learn more about the material they’ve read. Sometimes hearing someone else read it aloud can make you think about it in a different way and it is a fast way to become more familiar with the text.

There are also non-fiction audiobooks available. Whether these are biographies or historical guides there is a lot you can learn from having somebody else tell you it. This kind of learning is great for people n the go. You can’t read while you’re doing something else but you can listen.

Foreign languages

Want to learn a bit of conversational Italian for your upcoming holiday? Well you can with a CD. There are a whole host of foreign language courses available in CD format, some with accompanying workbooks. They generally work using a listen then repeat style of learning but have proven popular with tourists and even students of foreign languages.

Many language courses on CD will not necessarily claim to have you speaking like a native, but they will promise basic conversation skill within a few hours.

Learning for kids

Children learn things via different media than they did 20 or 30 years ago. Now CDs are often used to help young kids to learn and develop skills. CDs of songs about singing the alphabet or times tables help children to pick up this basic information easier because it is done in a much more fun way.

There are plenty of stories on CDs for children too which will help to keep them entertained as well as teaching them new vocabulary words.